Frost A Cake

Cake with frosting. It's a part of western culture for most celebratory events, especially those in childhood. But, have you ever tried to frost a cake without lessons? It probably turned out as hideous as my first cake did. This cake was dome shaped, there were cake crumbs in the icing, lumpy patches, thin patches, and butter knife marks everywhere.


Here's how to frost a layer cake and get a smooth even coating of frosting that rivals the most professionally applied fondant.

The Basics:

Tools & Ingredients:

Buttercream icing (recipe below)

Cake Spatula (from most grocery or home goods stores)

Cardboard cut to the size of your cake

High quality paper smooth towel (Viva is smooth enough)

• Never frost a warm cake. Frosting is made mainly of fat, and fat melts. You don't want your icing sliding off the cake! 
• Use a buttercream icing for this method. It is the standard frosting used on most cakes and the easiest to work with.  You can add food coloring and flavor extracts if you like; this one is easy to work with and only uses 4 ingredients. (recipe here:  http://www.thelittledelightsinlife.com/2012/04/tutorial-tuesday-my-delicious.html)
• Use 2 or more cakes to make a layer cake. With a bread knife, whittle away a little of the tops if they are very rounded or un-level so they will sit flat atop one another. Hold the knife as level as you can as you cut off the raised bits.  Place the first cake flat side down on a cake base of some kind, like your cardboard circle. Then place the second cake round side *down* so your cake top is nice and flat; check for levelness and trim a bit from the round sides of the cake layers if they don't lay evenly. If you were careful in cutting your tops flat, you will have very little adjusting to do and you can unstack the layers and add icing to the bottom layer to "glue" them together; replace the top layer. Voila, you now have a perfect cake base. 

Layer one: Crumb coat

Put a large glob of icing on the top of the cake and spread it across the top using a zig-zag motion with the cake spatula, changing directions to get it to stick well. Once the top is very thinly coated, you can spread the excess down the sides of the cake being sure to smoosh the icing into the gap between cake layers. This layer will be messy looking and thin, but that's ok. It is supposed to glue down all of the loose crumbs, so your top layer is clean and tidy. When you're done, place the cake in the freezer for 30 minutes so it gets very cold, but not frozen solid. This will make that crumb coat nice and firm. Wash off your spatula and throw away any excess icing that has crumbs in it. 

Layer 2: Top coat

Once again, put a big glob of icing on the top of your cake and start spreading it evenly across the surface with your zig-zag motion. Be careful this time to get it more even, and don't leave any thin spots. Do the sides the same way, adding globs of icing to them as needed. Level out your spatula ridges as best you can.

Finishing:

Use a very smooth pliable sheet of paper towel (Viva, for example) not the cheap bumpy kind. Take the towel and drape it over the top of your frosted cake and gently smooth it with your hand. This will knock down all those spatula marks and give you a perfect even layer of frosting that looks just like fondant. Pick up the towel (it won't stick) and look to see if there are still any high spots and rub them down again. Then do this to the sides.

Video: How to frost a cake with a paper towel